Metaphysical Exile

Friends, I just realized I stupidly hadn't post my talk with the great Lawrence Anton here. By now most, if not all of you, have watched it. But that doesn't excuse me not sharing it here, so here it is!

6 months ago | [YT] | 62

Metaphysical Exile

When I started the Metaphysical channel -- and Spotify --, the idea was to post my reading of the essays I write on my blog "Metaphysical Exile" and also record videos in free format, like a podcast, separating the two formats into distinct playlists. If you notice, there are currently two playlists: the Essays playlist, where I read the essays from the blog, and the Shorts playlist. The initial idea was that, in addition to the Essays playlist, there would be a "Free Format" playlist or something similar, where I would not be reading my texts, but talking loosely about different topics, but still with the same philosophical perspective. It ended up not happening, but I'm thinking about revisiting the idea. However, I don't know if it would be better now to create a new channel or just create a different playlist right here. I'm leaning towards creating a new channel, but I'd like to know your opinion.

6 months ago | [YT] | 31

Metaphysical Exile

I thought about giving up this English version of the exilado metafísico youtube channel and spotify, given that fewer and fewer people listen to my essays, and just remain translating the Portuguese written essays into English for the English version of the blog, which even fewer people read. But then I reminded myself why I sort of started to write and record my readings to post them on youtube and spotify in the first place: to leave something behind. Knowing that practically nobody will read the blog, recording them was a safer bet that at least one person would listen in the present while I'm alive, and maybe a couple more in the future when I'm long gone. A foolish endeavor, I know, but f*** it. Wanting to be read or heard because one feels like one has something to say is motivation enough. To the half a dozen of you who still check my stuff out, thank you. I mean it. For now, though, I might just translate fewer essays into English, the ones I feel are more important. It is what it is. Again, thank you.

7 months ago | [YT] | 77

Metaphysical Exile

In the English version of the video, the user matthewmurdock4875 summarized very well the point I tried to make in the essay ‘The God of Carnage’. To paraphrase his comment: the universe is essentially a parent sacrificing each of its children; even the luckiest of us are sacrificed, just more slowly than the others, so they feel less uncomfortable. That is why I sought to relate the thinking of Bataille, who is not a pessimistic or existence-rejecting philosopher, to that of Schopenhauer, who is a pessimist and existence-rejecting philosopher.

For Bataille, sacrifices — including human sacrifices — represent an important form of expenditure of the “accursed share”, that part of any economy that must be spent in irretrievable ways, since, according to him, there is always a surplus of energy that needs to be spent in some way that goes beyond what he calls the “restricted economy.” This part would be wasted anyway: for Bataille, violence and war represent profane ways of sacrificing lives, yes, but they continue to be forms of sacrifice of the accursed share.

The connection I make with Schopenhauer is that, in Bataille, whether we like it or not, the expenditure of what he calls the accursed share will always be carried out: either we sacrifice it to the gods, or we sacrifice it on the battlefield or in the brutal violence of everyday life. There is expenditure of this excess energy even in nature. We humans are simply more apt to sacrifice in a more spectacular and sumptuous way, that's all. Sacrifices end up being somewhat inevitable in his view. For Schopenhauer, on the other hand, the representations of the Will devour each other, in an endless grotesque theater: the universe, in a way, sacrifices its children countless times over the eons.

9 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 40

Metaphysical Exile

I wrote this in response to some comments on the Portuguese version of the essay, but I might as well translate it here:

The essay “Woke Jesus: a brief philosophical analysis based on Schopenhauer” is an analysis of the idea that Jesus would be “too woke” for certain Christians based on Schopenhauer's moral philosophy. In it, I do not make a political analysis, but an ethical one. So much so, that in the end of the essay I write that if Schopenhauer came back to life today he almost certainly wouldn't ally himself with the left, especially with Marxists — even though he would certainly consider the so-called “Christian conservatives” that think that Jesus is too woke as optimists and traitors to the original message of Christianity. But it is of no use to explain this. Some people are so inebriated with the political “culture war” that it is impossible for them to get away from it. They were conditioned to lash out every time they believe to have detected the scent of what they think is leftism.

There is an obvious disconnect between what these people understand to be Schopenhauer's philosophical pessimism and what it really is. They are closer to a reactionary interpretation of Nietzsche than to an objetive analysis of Schopenhauer. According to them, pessimism means betting on the worse in absolutely everything, and even to revel in the worst things. But Schopenhauer doesn't use the terms pessimism/pessimist and optimism/optimist in this way. A pessimist philosophy or religion, for Schopenhauer, is that which recognizes that we all share the same essence, therefore there isn't any difference between the suffering of another and mine. This, for Schopenhauer, should make us be compassionate towards others and want to help them, it should makes us want to decrease suffering as much as possible. This realization should also make one notice that existence is itself suffering and that it is better to deny one's own will. This denial of the will within oneself implies in even more compassion towards others, with the objetive to alleviate their suffering. However, according to the idiot who knows nothing of philosophy, this is “leftism” and “utopia.”

For Schopenhauer, optimistic philosophies and religions are the opposite of what these people believe they are: optimistic philosophies and religions affirm the will, not of others, but of oneself, since the will individuates itself in empirical existence. The will is selfish and it devours itself in the form of countless individual phenomena. In Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, not caring about the suffering of others, and only seeking one's own personal satisfaction in detriment of others is to affirm one's own will, it is to be an optimist. This posture, again, is more in line with a reactionary interpretation of Nietzschean philosophy, a philosophy that not only refuses to judge existence, but in fact affirms and worships it, reveling in it's most egotistical and grotesque aspects. For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer's moral philosophy is akin to Christian ethics, an ethics of the weak, that keeps the strong from accomplishing what is theirs by nature.

These people don't understand what they are talking about. Some even resent the obvious diagnosis I make in some of my essays, about them only claiming to be pessimists to give an air of intellectuality to their “right-wing” political positions. They say ludicrous things, such as: “pessimism can't be left-wing, because being left-wing means having faith in humanity, in existence, etc.” They learned these empty platitudes watching grifters and gurus, and they refuse to sit down and read for years on end in order to actually learn things. They don't know about Philipp Mainländer, for example. But we needn't go so far, since Mainländer was explicitly political in much of his analysis, even taking sides (the left), something that Schopenhauer never did.

We don't need to bring Mainländer, who was a pessimist and a socialist, to prove that these people haven't the slightest idea of what they're talking about. In several of my writings, I've cited passages from Schopenhauer that summarize his moral philosophy, only to be criticized and called “left-wing” in the same way. In other words, in the head of the imbecile that sees leftism everywhere, even Schopenhauer's moral philosophy is left-wing, utopic, etc, even though Schopenhauer didn't care about political and social issues. The idiot doesn't know that, so all that is left to him is to repeat mechanically, like a robot, the idiotic formula that he memorized watching his favorite grifters.

11 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 42

Metaphysical Exile

I've already written this on Instagram, but I think it's important to write it here as well. One of the things I was working on isn't turning out very well and it's not likely to come to fruition any time soon. The good side of this is that it gives me more time to dedicate to the blog and, consequently, to this channel, in addition to Spotify. It still won't be possible to write essays and record myself reading them every week—unless they're shorter and more poorly written than usual—, but I believe I'll be able to write and record at least one, maybe two essays per month. Cheers to things going wrong, I guess!

And one more thing.

I never ask people to subscribe to the channel during my recordings, or anything like that, and I've never asked people to share the essays during the videos. But today I'm going to ask you to share, if it's not too much of a hassle. If you like or at least find an essay of mine interesting, share it with other people. I know that many of the topics here aren't exactly popular, so I understand that you might not want to or won't be able to share. But if you can, when you can, it will help me a lot.

Thank you!

11 months ago | [YT] | 55

Metaphysical Exile

"The Fall into Time" will be the last essay of mine that I'll be publishing for a while. I'll keep trying to publish at least once a month, but if I'm being honest it's going to be difficult. What I'll do more is write thoughts on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, etc, and maybe publish shorts here on YouTube. I have too much stuff to do in the next many months and I can't keep this level of quality unless I drop everything else.

1 year ago | [YT] | 65